GONE TODAY, HAIR TOMORROW
(C)1995 Alan M. Schwartz
If you are a woman in your 40s, there is a 30% chance that you
have a certain progressive disseminated thinning on top. If you
are a man in your 20s, your male pattern baldness fears have
already commenced. Baldness has a strong hereditary component
triggered by testosterone and perhaps exacerbated by xenobiotic,
emotional, and cosmetic stresses. All the alligator dung mixed
with honey in the world will not bring back those long strong
hair shafts. A common side effect of the hypertension drug
minoxidil (1) is furious hair growth (Rogaine). It moves some
seriously huge sums of money. Nobody knows the identity of the
natural ligand for which minoxidil substitutes, nor where its
receptor site is located. All attempts to improve upon the
serendipitous discovery have been fruitless.
(Getting bald is easy. The seed-protective non-protein amino
acid mimosine (2), accidentally eaten by animals, depilates their
hides. Sheep who eat seeds of plants of the genera Mimosa or
Leucana totally shed their fleece within three days, likewise
rats and mice. Just a little more is toxic, then lethal.
Topical application is therefore preferred over ingestion. One
stands amazed that in a Western society obsessed with hairless
female skin, an ammo dump of razors, depilatories, bleach, wax,
and electromechanical pluckers has not be rendered obsolete by a
periodically applied dab of mimosine cream.)
While the cosmos of ethical pharmaceuticals has been desperately
searching for a better molecule than minoxidil in an Officially-
approved-by-Corporate-Culture manner, Gail Martin of the
University of California/San Francisco knocked out the mouse gene
for fibroblast growth factor 5, Fgf5, just to see what would
happen (3). What she hoped would happen was a research grant
renewal. What really happened was that, and a whole lot more:
She created a colony of the world's shaggiest mice. Fgf5 protein
is the signal which tells a hair follicle to atrophy, shed its
hair, and go dormant. When mice cannot produce Fgf5 they look
like an explosion in a mattress factory. Ms. Martin has found a
pot of gold at the end of a genetic rainbow. She could become
the Somatic Fur Queen of all humanity, achieving profound wealth
reupholstering bald pates and balding upholstered upper lips,
armpits, legs, and bikini lines. The industrial applications -
sheep's wool; mohair (Angora goat), cashmere; alpaca, guanaco,
llama, vicuna; angora (rabbit); - will make her a goddess.
Pluck a hair. If it resisted removal you will note that its base
is encased in a small, thin and adherent cylinder of tissue.
Within the pore that held the follicle a yet unidentified island
of progenitor cells will awaken and create another follicle,
which migrates further into the scalp to what will be the base of
the new hair shaft. Metabolism and elongation follow as a new
hair grows out. At some future time apparently determined by
increasing expression of Fgf5, the follicle slowly migrates
upward toward the surface of the scalp, slows its growth,
atrophies, and sheds the hair. A typical single hair will grow
for two to three years or more. Its follicle then goes dormant
for perhaps six months, and the cycle resumes.
A bald man still has a full head of hair. Rather than the robust
and persistent hairs of his youth, he grows microscopically fine
down whose follicles remain hard by the scalp surface, and which
persist for only weeks or days before being shed. Asian females
are renowned for their long follicle growth cycles, allowing
cascades of hair to stretch from their scalp to their waists, or
their knees. Pathological acute hair loss, alopecia, can render
a victim whole-body bald within days, and nobody knows why or
how. Cancer chemotherapy destroys the most rapidly dividing body
cells. It causes sterility, anemia, ulceration from your mouth
to your anus, and baldness. The last in the list causes
inconceivable emotional travail. Humanity is obsessed with its
hair. Gail Martin has driven a thin wedge into a solid block of
ignorance. Thunder echoes across the whole of planet Earth.
How big is the market? Assume 100 million US women are paranoid
about their cute little moustaches. A mere gram of miracle
cream each week, 1/28 of an ounce, sums to 5,200 metric tons of
cosmetic annually. America's 80 million bald(ing) heads would
easily triple that. Ladies and gentlemen, women and men, we can
now grow hair where you want it and miraculously remove it from
where you do not! All that is required is a safety waiver from
the Food and Drug Administration, expected to be granted in the
spring of 2157 (barring complications).
1) US Pat. 3,382,247; 3,644,364
Drugs 22 257 (1981)
J. Am. Acad. Dermatol. 13 185 (1985)
Int. J. Dermatol. 24 82 (1985)
Analytical Profiles of Drug Substances, Vol. 17, K. Florey,
Ed. (Academic Press, New York, 1988) pp. 185-219)
2) Heterocycles 7 265 (1977)
Nature 194 694 (1962)
Ann. Rev. Biochem. 38 137 (1969)
Aust. J. Agr. Res. 15 153 (1964)
Compt. Rend. 204 890 (1937)
3) Discover 16(5) 16 (1995)